Dear Grief,
To say that I expected your presence to be felt so heavy this year is truly understating the reality of your impact. I recognise your presence, the lingering shadow that you leave me and my family as you join us in mourning the passing of those I hold dear and love. Your black cloak is a warning and also a blessing, reminding me that life goes on even whilst I stand idly by, frozen by your hold. Over the last few months, weeks and days, it has become impossible to escape you. You have latched onto me like a vice and refused to let go. I have pleaded with you, begged you to release me from your stranglehold. I have cried tears of sadness, wishing that it would suffice and prove to you that you are no longer needed. Yet, here you are. Watching over me. Like some maligned guardian, wanted and unwanted.
Your presence has made me into something I never imagined I would become. I have become quiet, sheltered and afraid. The world has become more dark and harrowing because you were complicit in joining forces with others in an effort to bring me down. I see you, your unholy circle of emotions. Grief, Sadness, Anger. You have all invited yourselves into my heart and I desperately want to know how I banish you from my life. I have tried all manners of things and yet you remain. You have stood with me as I watched those I love carried into the next life. You have stood with me as I screamed in anger. You have stood with me as I struggled with every emotion.
Now, you stand with me as I consider these terrible thoughts, your presence a demon waiting for me to make a mistake. I have contemplated the simple ease of ending my life, simply to be free of the hold you have on me. I came to realise that doing so would simply give you an excuse to linger around others. It does not mean those thoughts do not come. They haunt me, as you do, silent in the daylight and so loud in the darkness. How can I express to you how much I hate you for what you have made of me? Nothing more than a mess of a man, chained by emotions that I thought I had rid myself of.
Grief, I hate you. I hate what your presence means. I hate that you stand by and do nothing as more and more people leave me. You never do. You stand there, a black shadow with no face and many faces. You have the face of those I miss dearly, sometimes a blur as memories fade. You come with the sound of fond memories, trailing with you the emotions I assumed would pass. How can you care so little and so much at once? You are with me because you love me. You have remained because you hate me. Grief, you have possessed me, taken control of my mind and refused to relinquish your grip.
I go to bed at night waiting for you to enter my mind, slithering in like smoke from a fire. You take hold, stopping me from getting the sleep I desperately need. When I wake up, you return with as much force as you had before. Your power over me is unknowable, indescribable. Grief, you are a monster. You know this. I suspect that, in some way, you know what you do to people and yet you cannot leave. You can only leave when you know that your companion is safe, that they can move on with their lives. With all of the other foul unions and bonds I have made with your cohorts, I suspect you may never leave me.
I no longer know who I am with you around. I have forgotten what it means to experience happiness and joy. What was once a wonderful and incredibly colourful palette is now nothing more than greyscale. You seem to soak all the positivity in my life and use it to feed you, growing stronger every time you return. You slither away, coming back even stronger with every phone call to tell me that someone else has disappeared. I am writing to you almost because I feel like this is my last resort. I know no other solution to a problem like you.
I know that it is not your fault. You did not choose this life but you have embraced your role. I can only hope that, when you do eventually leave, you do not come back quite so quickly. I am tired of worrying that you will come back. Let me be at peace, even for a few months. Let me have my joy and happiness for a short while before you come back and shatter the illusion. Let me have something before you break the mirror and remind me that it was never truly real, that you were always there.
Perhaps, in time, you will change too. Perhaps, Grief, you will leave and then come back with new companions. Maybe then, I can accept you in my life. For now, I wish you would simply leave and never come back because my heart aches in a way it never has. My mind is never silent when you are around. Grief, please give me something. You have taken so much from me. At the very least, you can give me something back.
Writeriori 